Product Recalls in European Textile and Clothing Sector—A Macro Analysis of Risks and Geographical Patterns
2022 (English)In: Stats, E-ISSN 2571-905X, Vol. 5, no 4, p. 1044-1061Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Sustainable development
According to the author(s), the content of this publication falls within the area of sustainable development.
Abstract [en]
Textile and clothing (T&C) products contribute to a substantial proportion of the non-food product recalls in the European Union (EU) due to various levels of associated risks. Out of the listed 34 categories for product recalls in the EU’s Rapid Exchange of Information System (RAPEX), the category ’clothing, textiles, and fashion items’ was among the top 3 categories with the most recall cases during 2013–2019. Previous studies have attempted to highlight the issue of product recalls and their impacts from the perspective of a single company or selected companies, whereas limited attention is paid to understand the problem from a sector-specific perspective. However, considering the nature of product risks and the consistency in a higher number of recall cases, it is important to analyze the issue of product recalls in the T&C sector from a sector-specific perspective. In this context, the paper focuses on investigating the past recalls in the T&C sector reported RAPEX during 2005–2021 to understand the major trends in recall occurrence and associated hazards. Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) were applied to analyze the qualitative and quantitative recall data. The results reveal that there is a geographical pattern for the product risk that leads to the recalls. The countries in eastern part of Europe tend to have proportionately high recalls in strangulation and choking-related issues, whereas chemical-related recalls are proportionately high in countries located in western part of Europe. Further, text-mining results indicate that design-related recall issues are more prevalent in children’s clothing.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 5, no 4, p. 1044-1061
Keywords [en]
product recall; product risk; textile and clothing; correspondence analysis; Latent Dirichlet Allocation
National Category
Other Computer and Information Science Economics and Business
Research subject
Textiles and Fashion (General)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-28971DOI: 10.3390/stats5040062ISI: 000902619000001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85144667191OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hb-28971DiVA, id: diva2:1713504
2022-11-252022-11-252023-02-07Bibliographically approved